NO HOLDS BARRED

(photo: Esther Lin/Showtime)

On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with our colleague, correspondent, and award-winning boxing writer, Charles Farrell, who is also co-editor of The Boxing Standard.

Our main subject was what is expected to be the biggest fight this year, and perhaps the biggest grossing pay-per-view of all time, the September 14 showdown between Floyd Mayweather and Saul "Canelo" Alvarez.

In this bout between these two unbeaten fighters, the 36-year-old pound-for-pound king Mayweather (44-0, 26 KOs) faces the 23-year-old WBA and WBC 154-pound champion Alvarez (42-0-1, 30 KOs) at a catch weight of 152 pounds. It takes place Saturday, September 14, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and will be shown live in the U.S. on Showtime pay-per-view, in the U.K. on BoxNation, in Mexico on Televisa, and also on many networks around the world. The event is promoted by Mayweather Promotions, Golden Boy Promotions, and Canelo Promotions.

We spoke with Charles Farrell Thursday to preview this fight.

Mayweather is the favorite to win this fight, and we both agreed with that assessment.

"I do think it should be a pretty decisive win for Mayweather," said Charles Farrell. "Aside from some difference in size -- Canelo is a bigger guy and he's a growing guy -- I don't see that Mayweather doesn't have every appreciable advantage. There's nothing that Canelo does that he hasn't seen many, many times before." He added that he expects the likeliest outcome to be a comfortable 12-round decision for Mayweather.

However, this being boxing, we also discussed the possibility, as some others have as well, that Mayweather would win the fight but would lose the decision. Robberies and horribly bad decisions are common in boxing, so we discussed the business considerations behind such a possibility, including Canelo's popularity and potential longevity as a star.

We also discussed the many prominent boxing writers "who don't know anything about boxing", as well as some comments on the compelling co-feature on this show, where WBA and WBC 140-pound champion Danny Garcia (26-0, 16 KOs) takes on slugger Lucas Matthysse (34-2, 32 KOs).

In addition, we play a brief excerpt from the media conference calls for this fight, one with Canelo and another with Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions.

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Labels: boxing, Charles Farrell, Eddie Goldman, Floyd Mayweather, No Holds Barred, Saul Canelo Alvarez